Friday, August 19, 2011

Mike Joy Returns This Weekend For SPEED

Since ESPN has both the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series race telecasts this time of the season, SPEED has been rotating various TV personalities through the lead announcer position to work on the practice and qualifying coverage.

Perhaps you might recognize that young man in the center of the picture. Mike Joy has been in the racing game for a long time. That is Jim France on the left side of the picture and the late Ed Yerrington on the right.

Joy will be in Michigan this Friday and Saturday anchoring the network's coverage of the Sprint Cup Series activity. Joy is on the air Friday at noon ET, but his fellow announcer Rick Allen will start the day at 11AM with Camping World Truck Series practice.

There is a lot going on in the sport right now and SPEED has simply been outstanding at getting information on these topics across to fans in a timely fashion. While John Roberts is known for hosting the RaceDay extravaganza on Sundays, he is very effective with his NASCAR Live shows on Fridays and Saturdays.

Creating the Monday through Thursday hour-long RaceHub series has been the best thing SPEED has done in years. By the time coverage begins from the tracks on Friday, viewers are already up to speed on the topics in the news and issues to be discussed.

This week ESPN's Marty Smith offered a factual report on NASCAR Now that Danica Patrick is coming to NASCAR starting next season. Greg Biffle and Boris Said also traded verbal jabs on RaceHub this week over the Watkins Glen festivities.

JD Gibbs also appeared on both daily NASCAR TV shows, speaking frankly about the fact he was negotiating with Carl Edwards to make a move to JGR but the pieces just did not fall into place. Edwards himself has yet to comment on his owner Jack Roush saying Edwards will leave the Nationwide Series as a driver to join ESPN in 2012.

One positive thing about SPEED's coverage is that much of it is streamed online for Sprint users through the NASCAR Mobile and SprintTV apps. With NASCAR lagging many years behind in online distribution, this feature is handy for those brand-loyal fans who stayed with Sprint.

We invite you to post your observations on these topics and the Friday TV coverage from SPEED as we move through Friday. We will also update any breaking news on this post. To add your comment, just click the comment button below.

Thanks for taking the time to join us and we look forward to your opinions.

14 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Well, had a lot of the usual filler one can expect from a mid-week report on a weekend event.

But it was, and is increasingly solid.

Speed, I think, has hit their stride.

I loathe the prospect of Danica-mania for the people making an honest, often broke living racing next to her...and frankly, she's been a mediocre driver since day 1. Why screw over your bread and butter drivers, teams, and sponsors?

Only complaint I really have, and one that I have yet to see Speed do, as compared to ESPN.

But, with that said, racing is an advertising vehicle, and not a sport, in the minds of people with stock options et al, and it shows. I do not expect different.

We can, as viewers, expect a tussle between Danica and Kyle in terms of who to cover most. Even if either are running in 900th place. It's a shame.

Thanks to Speed for continuing some great coverage of American racing. I can only hope Nascar lays off the money grab and maybe lets them take over NW and Trucks both when things get renegotiated.

Do you know if any ABC stations like KTRK-13 here in Houston will be putting the Bristol race on 8/27 on their digital subchannels because they have NFL preseason football on the main channel at the same time? 13.2 is the LiveWell HD channel but listings don't show the Brisol race on that night, just the usual digital subchannel garbage. Last year they put it on 13.2 but Houston is not a highly-rated NASCAR market

Good for Mike he's better than a lot of them they could put on. Anon at 12:04 AM don't tell me us folks here in Houston will miss the Bristol race because of a pre-season football game on KTRK. Anyway, did everyone see Ambrose's interview with Steve Byrnes the other night, Steve got a little choked up at the end!

Always great to hear Mike's voice call a race. It's been a while but pretty sure it was Mike and Jack Arute that called the first race I ever went to in the mid-70s at Stafford. Look forward to hearing what has now become for me the voice of age and history that Ken Squier was in the 70s and 80s. But still surprised everytime i see Gray on Mike's head (I must be getting old too)

OK, so I turned on SpeedTV at 8am west coast time and took a break to sweep the pool and put the dishes away, the point being is that I had to listen to the program, not view it and it gives a different perspective to the program.At the time the subject was the lack of SAFER barriers at The Glenn and of course how the safety systems need to be reviewed and I would think the angle at which those safety barriers are in relation to the track. Smiling faces all around, things will be better when the circus comes back to town. Good, I guess. But my problem is where was everyone after Elliot Sadler hit a wall at Pocono just like David Regan did on Monday. “We’re on-it”. There is or was no journalistic questioning of the lack of vision of the obvious, a barrier at a sever angle next to the track. Note that we watched all the weekly shows end to end.This is called a Tombstone Mentality, with smiling faces on both sides of the camera. In 2000 three drivers died under similar circumstances but it wasn’t until February 2001 that the “we’re on it” attitude came on-line. We’ve seen the same, smiling faces all around this week, as the media reports on the JGR engine department failure, smiling faces on both sides of the camera. This isn’t a joining of TRD and JGR, this is a concession from Gibbs that the engines or the oil just ain’t making it. But no questioning of the obvious, it just seems a little too close between journalistic objectivity and friendships.Of course all the television broadcasters are caught up in it as has been pointed out numerous times here what with Rusty, Brad and others involved with the sport on both sides of the camera.Make no mistake SpeedTV and everyone involve there are doing a great job and are a big part of our television lives but the buddy-buddy thing removes objectivity, criticism and clarity.

I think it will be interesting to watch Mike do his "thing" without the distraction of the Waltrips and Larry Mac in his face. Last week we had a very limited use of outside the booth distractions, the response here was overwhelmingly positive that the massive amount of former experts and cutie newbies were not really necessary to broadcast a race. Let us hope this opportunity for Mike Joy to do a race on his own will demonsrtate his ability to complete what we call the "KISS" theory!

I lost two cars -- and I am, right now, 1,200 + miles away. Story Follows:

I LOST CARS Dag Nabbit! A story from Milton, FL. (courstesy of WEAR TV-3 (Pensacola) "MILTON - Several expensive race cars were damaged when a garage caught fire in East Milton Thursday. The owner estimates a quarter-million dollars worth of racing equipment was destroyed. Four nearby homes were evacuated briefly as firecrews worried about fuel exploding in the garage. No one was hurt. SPECCIE!!!! Do you have any idea how much a race car costs?????? (even a "cheep, cheep" one the brids sig about.

Isn't just perfect. Mikey andcompany yelling their ass*s off. Yep some things nevah change.And then of course we hear thenames of the front running driversover and over and over and overandover and over and over again..simpy great tv aint it